Cherry on Top

It was supposed to be kind of a low key weekend.   Chizz is off on a trip with a friend, ferrying a car across country.  It is a guy thing, stopping at baseball fields, breweries and the spam museum without any chicks around (thank goodness).  I was going to hang out in NYC on my own, had a few things I thought I might do but no real plans.   But then Snake called and he was wondering if it would be okay for him to come and hang out for the weekend?  Uh, yes.  Of course.  So up he came.  After sleeping in until about noon on Saturday, we decided to head out to the 9/11 memorial.  Snake hadn't been there before.  Afterward I took him to one of our favorite little bistros not far from the house. 

The next morning we decided to check out the Puerto Rico Day parade.  I had heard of the parade originally from Seinfeld, (remember when Kramer got chased by a mob after destroying the Puerto Rican flag?).  I have seen a few parades since we have moved here.  This city loves a parade and will pretty much let just about anyone celebrate their heritage.  However, the Puerto Rico Day parade has to be one of the largest, next to the St. Patrick's Day parade.  People lined up and down the street with their red white and blue. 

And I got to see my 4th famous person sighting.  For those of you keeping count:  Brian Williams - St. Patrick's Day Parade; Marcus Samuelsson (chef) Red Rooster - Harlem;  Angelo Sosa (chef - Top Chef) 9th Street Fair.  Does it say something about me that most of the people I recognize are chefs?   And here is number 4:

Governor Andrew Cuomo, marching in the Parade, holding the flag of his heritage.  Wait a minute. . . . I think this might be a polictically scripted moment.  Ya' think?

So after this, Snake wanted to go back and catch a little of the European Champions League matches on tv.  (soccer, you can take the boy out of London, can't take the London out of the boy).  So we watched for a little while, then Snake and I got an early dinner and put him on the subway to catch his bus back to DC.  It was nice having a little mother son bonding time.  He is a good kid and I appreciate more and more the young man he is becoming.  I could not be more proud.

So it was still pretty early in the evening and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but knew I didn't want to go back to the apartment.  Originally I thought that I would kind of stalk the Tony Awards which were being held that night at the Beacon Theatre, in my very own neighborhood.  But I thought it might be too late.  I decided to head over anyway and see what I could see.  At the front of the theatre there were all kinds of people milling about in tuxedos and gowns but it really didn't look like I expected it to.  Where was the red carpet, where were the paparazzi, where were the stars of the stage?  Where was the hoopla? Then I remembered last week, when I was walking behind the theatre and saw them setting up what I thought was the electrical support for the evening. So I decided to check it out.  Voila!!!!!   


Hoopla! 

Back of Red Carpet

Now we are talking, crowds, cameras, limos. It was great.  The worst part for me is that I wasn't really prepared.  I didn't have the right camera and the one I had, the battery died about 20 minutes into my photo taking.  I was kind of far away so it was hard to get photos at all since I didn't really have a zoom.  After the camera died, I took photos with my crappy Iphone 3 camera.  You just have to trust me that the photos are who I say they are.  After all, you weren't there!

The crowd was great.  Everyone was in a good mood.  There were a few girls there who knew every single person that stepped out of a limo.  That is quite a feat, considering that quite a few of these people have done just theatre and are not necessarily household names (although they should be!).  So it was quite helpful that sometimes the girls clued us in on who just got out of a car.  John Stamos was there and he looks both suspiciously young and suspiciously tan.  He was very friendly and crossed the crowd to talk with people.  If you measure the squeal of the fans in a numeric scale from 0 being silence to 20 being a deafening roar, I would say he got a respectible 15 on the scale.  Which is kind of surprising.  Has he done much since Uncle Jesse?  Hugh Jackman was standing right in front of me for quite a bit of time giving an interview and the women kept screaming his name and trying to get his attention.  A little girl about 10 years old or so asked her dad who he was, she didn't know.  He paused for a minute and said "He's like Justin Bieber for older women".  Yep.  That pretty much sums it up.  One of the best surprises of the night was Matthew Morrison from Glee.  He got out of his limo started for the red carpet when all of the sudden he turned around came over to the crowd and just started running down the line up across the street, giving the entire front row high fives. 

Here he is going up the street:

And now coming back: 

Nice photograpy, huh?  Sigh.  I am officially definitely in the market for a new point-n-shoot camera that I can carry around in my purse that has a better response time than this!  But I digress.  It was more difficult to get photos of the women because they tended to get out of the car closest to the red carpet area and walk right in.  But we saw Amanda Seyfried, Audra McDonald, Kelli O'Hara, Jessica Chastain, Phylicia Rashad and others.   It was kind of sad when Candice Bergen arrived, not one blip on the squeal scale.  One woman and I were the only ones that recognized her in our group.  Sad.  Overall, this was a blast and I will be back next year.  It was just fun to hang out and see all the actors.  For the most part the actors seemed pretty excited to be there and did respond to the crowd by waiving and yelling back.   I spent quite a bit of time talking with a woman on her first trip to NYC.  She was visiting her son and daughter and was just thrilled to do this.  She kept saying over and over again to her daughter "this is the kind of stuf you can do because you live in New York, you are so lucky".  My sentiments exactly.   

What was supposed to be a low-key weekend turned out to be pretty cool.  I hung out with my son and got to do a few things on my bucket list.  Pretty lucky, indeed.